A grateful party guest approached me during a small speedonthewater.com gathering last Thursday night in Miami. “I can’t thank you enough for inviting me to this,” he said. “I got to hang out with a lot my heroes tonight. Where else can you have a drink and talk to someone like Steve Curtis?”

The busiest man in offshore racing (center with Outerlimits’ Dan Kleitz and Jay Amaral) continues to get busier. Photo courtesy/copyright Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill PIx.

“That guy?” I said, then laughed. “Yeah, he’s OK.”

For the record, Steve Curtis, the dashingly handsome and charming, United Kingdom-born legendary throttleman, is a lot more than OK. I just couldn’t resist trying to play it cool.

But I couldn’t blame our guest for being a little star struck, because Curtis, the son of famed U.K.-based Cougar Marine founder Clive Curtis is a bonafide star in the offshore powerboat racing world. Most recently in his 33-year racing career, he throttled the Miss GEICO catamaran to a Super Boat International national championship in 2018 and an SBI world championship in 2017 in Key West, Fla., where he also throttled one of the Victory Team cats the following year.

But his best-known accomplishment to date arguably has to be throttling a 50-foot Mystic Powerboats catamaran to 244 mph during the 2014 Lake of the Ozarks Shootout in Central Missouri.

Read More: Catching Up With Steve Curtis